The Human Dilemma

'Nothing comes out of nothing', thunders Lear in the play by Shakespeare, piqued with the intransigence of his youngest and dearest daughter, Cordelia. Seems logical indeed! How can something come out of nothing?  That is how the general perception goes. So, Lear is very much right, when he remonstrates to Cordelia.

And yet, most of our religions explicitly hold the contrary view. While Adi Shankara calls this world Maya, Buddhism goes one step further by denying the reality of anything underlying this Maya. Nothingness is all, it says loud and clear. Even the Rig Veda holds that this world came out of nothing, though it stops short of considering that as the Ultimate Reality, when it speaks of the interplay between Being and Non-Being. While other texts do not take such pronounced stands, they allude to this truth obliquely when they insist upon a state of equilibrium in the material and psychological aspects of existence as the cherished goals of human striving. The state of equilibrium, it may be elaborated to drive home the point, is the state where the value of the opposites is set off against each other, and thus reduced/increased to zero. The number line best illustrates this phenomenon. At the place value of zero, the positive and the negative integers collapse into non-existence. In other words, zero represents the point of equilibrium of the number line. And yet when we stretch out beyond zero on either side, we witness the emergence of infinite pairs of integers. Now, if we were to transpose our emotions on the number line, the state of mental equilibrium would fall on the place value of zero, as at this point, there are no conflicting states of emotions. But as we move away from the point of equilibrium, we would witness the birth of conflicting pairs of emotional states. The entire cosmic order is hinged on this Theory of Balance, which every religion upholds. In other words, nothingness is the highest value that every religion has upheld as a cherished goal, though obliquely.

What is in it for (wo)man then? That though this world is real, it is important for (wo)man to understand that supreme peace lies not in wavering far away from the point of equilibrium, the zero-point, but in remaining rooted firmly in it. Whosoever ignores this Truth, will do so at the cost of his/her own suffering on account of the imbalance that will seep into his/her life.  

The Second Coming of The Buddha

I happened to visit Thailand twice. Once, when I taught at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana and the second time, when I happened to work at Jagannath International Management School, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. On each visit, I was struck by the almost omnipresent reverence for The Buddha in Thailand.

The Master was every where. Imposing and yet compassionate. The soft-speaking Thais came in deep reverence, burnt incense sticks at the altar and then lay prostrate, seeking His Benediction. I watched all with the amused interest of a tourist the first time I visited Thailand.

My second visit happened almost a decade later. This time when I visited the Buddhist temples in Bangkok, I could feel Him tugging at my heart-strings. Though I am a deeply private person shunning all forms of outward religious expression, I could not but feel impelled to follow likewise. Was it my Ego that the Master had overcome or my introversion? Hard to say. Or may be both. As I stood in silent reverence at His Feet, I could feel Peace descend. A renewal, so to say. An epiphany. Was the Master cleansing me of my myriad contradictions? Perhaps, so. How else could I explain the feeling of re-newal?

And then a question began to take shape within me.

Wasn't it strange that the Land which gave The Master to the world should be blissfully ignorant of Him? True, The Buddha spoke of Timeless Truths. But then, He manifested and lived in the Great Landmass of India. He was not an Idea, but a Real Historical Person. His Teachings occurred in the continuum of the Great Indian Cultural Tradition. True, He was an Iconoclast, in the sense that He hit out at the deadwood of the then prevalent ritualism.

But, despite that He existed in the line of the Mystic Tradition of India, which believes in re-statement of the Truth, in all its pristine and unalloyed purity. Idioms of expression over the ages grow stultified and lose the sheen of their original meaning. It is essential that Truth be rescued from its outward formal statement from time to time, if it has to enthuse and inspire people to right action.

This is exactly what The Buddha did. So, it is indeed sad that this Great Mystic Master should have been forgotten in the Land of His Birth. Such were the thoughts that kept circulating in my mind, even long after I had come back to my hotel room.

On the last day of my sojourn in Bangkok, I visited the malls for buying memorabilia for friends and relations. As I surveyed the various curios stacked up daintily in the various shops, my eyes fell upon a sculpture of Him. As I looked at Him, I lost all sense of Time and Space. My heart was in a ferment. A cool voice whispered, 'Take me home.' I was charged with Energy, as if possessed. I enquired from the vendor the price of the sculpture. I fished out my wallet and took out the Bahts lying therein, handing them quietly over to her. Very reverently, she packed the sculpture and handed it over to me, along with the change. The commotion in my heart subsided only after I had received it to take it back to India.

Ever since then, I have witnessed a growing upsurge of interest in The Buddha and His Teachings in India. It is a matter of common knowledge that politics influences our lives in many ways. So, when the Prime Minister of a country invokes the name of a Mystic Master at different public fora, national and international, very often, his invocation cannot but touch the consciousness of the people of that country. This is precisely what has been happening in recent years in India. Prime Minister Modi has again and yet again been invoking the name of this Great Mystic Master of India in Nepal, India and the Far East, as the Apostle of Peace in a world riven along the fault lines of caste, class, creed and colour.

This is not a sheer coincidence nor is it an act of political stratagem, as one newspaper makes it out to be. It is a clear sign of the Homecoming of the Mystic Master, the sign of the Second Coming of The Buddha. At a time when the world stands perilously divided, with the forces of Disorder and Chaos out to wreck the gains of centuries of Order and Civilization, the Homecoming of The Buddha to the Land of His Birth holds far reaching significance.


www.ravikdhar.in









       

The Pause

Pauses are significant in life. No individual can continue to work non-stop, without running the risk of a mental or physical breakdown. What to speak of individuals, even machines need to be rested or else they could act funny.

Nature, like a great artificer, has worked out a unique balance between phases of action and rest, to keep its works going. But, modern (wo)man under the influence of the corporate mantra of ceaseless action has been at pains to defy this simple law of Nature. No wonder, (s)he feels out of place when (s)he is plucked out of the gyrating routine of work. (S)he looks for one activity or another to pre-occupy him/her-self to beat the blues of 'no-work'.

The problem is compounded by the target-oriented work schedule imposed on his/her life. It interferes with his/her assessment of 'what-constitutes-work'. Social interaction certainly gets banished from this haloed circle. And signs of it in other people's lives are contemptuously wished away as 'wasteful-indulgence'.

The result is the transformation of the human individual into a 'corporate automaton'. Someone who gets switched on like a tube-light and switched off too in the same fashion, with the beginning and ending of the work-schedule.

Bereft of his/her 'human-ness', (s)he is like the wheel of Sisiphus for ever in motion, mentally or physically. This lies at the heart of most of the modern lifestyle/ stress-related ailments.

Promo Video of my debut novel, Orphans of the Storm

The Promo Video of my debut novel, Orphans of the Storm, is now available on You Tube and also on my Author's Page on Amazon.com. I am thankful to my dear student, Kunal Goel, for doing a wonderful job in getting this video up in so beautiful a way. The video spans the action of the three books, that is the trilogy, the Kashmir Trilogy, of which Orphans of the Storm is the first part. I welcome all to take a peek into the action of my trilogy through this promo video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fcsdjXH2pY&t=22

Orphans of the Storm

I am returning to this blog after a very long time. Call it destiny. I had started it long ago with a view to air my views on my life and my times. As the wheel of time rolled on, I came to write my first novel, Orphans of the Storm. Though it took quite a time to publish, I am content that that it came out now. As my dear friend, Prof C. P. Singh remarked today, ' Your novel has come out at the most appropriate time.' Well, friends, I did not time it. The Almighty did. Again, it is His Grace that has made the novel chime with the reading tastes of my readers. The novel has been doing moderately well on the e-tailing sites, like Flipkart and Infibeam. And the response that I have received from my readers has been very warm and encouraging. Already, the novel has crossed 33666 likes on its Facebook page and the numbers continue to grow. The likes are spread out geographically across four regions of the country, though my karmabhoomi, Delhi, leads with an impressive tally.

Yet, I would be failing in my duty if I don't record here my deep sense of gratitude to my Kashmiri Pundit community members, who have overwhelmingly supported the sale of this book. Both, individually and as a community, their love and affection has been a driving force to serve the cause of this utterly marginalized community in the politics of independent India.

It is an irony of fate that the community which gave the country its first Prime Minister in post-independent India, finds itself abandoned by successive political parties in power at the Centre and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The greatest damage to the community was done by the pseudo-secularists, who in the name of this Western coinage, turned a blind eye to the genocide perpetrated on the community and their eventual Exodus from their native land. A warning to such secularists: the present of Kashmir is the future of India, unless they stop playing unethical and vote-bank politics.

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